


& we too shall yield to love (et nos cedamus amori)

by erce3



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Medieval, F/F, Historical Inaccuracy, Mutual Pining, Road Trips, Slow Burn, very inaccurate. v e r y
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-08
Updated: 2019-07-08
Packaged: 2020-06-24 22:40:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19733122
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/erce3/pseuds/erce3
Summary: Catra smiles, snakelike, catlike, the corners of her pink mouth lifting upward. “Come swim with me, Adora,” she says, less pleadingly and more like she knows already Adora will say yes. She’s too close to Adora, who can feel the princess’ warmth, and the sun is beating down again on her own clothed figure. Adora breathes in dust and humidity, and she thirsts.(day 3 of catradora week: futuristic / medieval)





	& we too shall yield to love (et nos cedamus amori)

"I burned so long so quiet you must have wondered

if I loved you back. I did, I did, I do."

– **Annelyse Gelman,** _Everyone I Love Is a Stranger to Someone_

Adora rises at dawn. The air is clear, bright, and the orange glow from the East casts a haziness over the landscape. Her room is small and sparse — _unlived in,_ some might say, though few have been in it to comment. She knows, at least, what Catra might mock: her neatly made bed, the two books Adora treasures, the dry and stained inkwell, all signs that someone might have tried to make this a proper living space two or three years ago but since had given up; but then again, Adora and Catra don’t know each other as well as they used to. And though her room may have unpainted walls, few books, a dry inkwell — Adora’s view is the best in the castle. 

She allows herself another moment to gaze upon it before she sets to work.

The guards all wake at the same time as she does, some to begin the morning shift and others to train. Adora joins them in silence, listening to their grumbling and teasing but never participating. The guards are constantly shifting — any friends Adora made three years ago are either long gone or changed beyond recognition.

She doesn’t let this bother her. 

Hours pass as she goes methodically through her daily workout, and the heat gradually becomes oppressive. Cicadas hum in the haze. August, she thinks with distaste, and she wipes away a layer of sweat on her forehead with the back of her hand. The other guards training beside her dwindle, returning to their barracks for the shade or beginning their duty. Fortunately for Adora, the princess has always been a late riser.

She peers at the sundial mounted against the wall of the dining hall and unsticks a strand of hair plastered against her forehead. It’s the tenth hour. She still has two or so hours before the princess wakes, so she pads out to the stables to find Swift Wind. A few guards give her looks as she leaves, but Adora pays them no mind. She has a long journey ahead of her tomorrow; she deserves some rest before then.

The stables are no cooler than outside; in fact, they are stuffy and dark. Sunlight filters through somewhat, but really only succeeds in casting dramatic shadows over the horses. Swift Wind, bright white that he is, looks grey in the dim lighting. Adora’s breathing is heavy and slow in the thick heat. “Hey, boy,” she says, patting his neck. He nuzzles against her, and she feeds him an apple she stole from the kitchens this morning.

She mounts him quickly, since she has so little time, and steers him into the shady forest, which offers little refuge against the weather. It is somewhat cooler, though — enough for Adora’s legs not to be sticky against Swift Wind’s warm flank. It’s a short ride, anyway, to the river, where Adora quickly strips to her undergarments and dives in, leaving Swift Wind to graze under a particularly shady tree. 

The water is bitingly cold. Adora breathes a sigh of relief and dunks her head. She keeps an eye on the sun ahead to mark the time, as she did so often in the past couple of years, and wades deeper into the water, splashing her reddening shoulders as she does. “I missed this, boy,” she calls to Swift Wind giddily, and he tosses his head in response. 

Adora laughs. The sound is clear and bright; her posture relaxes for the first time in a while. She trails a hand through the clear water, parting it, watching the multicolored pebbles between her toes and the moss that curls and waves like fish tails underneath the current. Her head begins to clear.

The stream isn’t as deep as it has been in past years, but Adora doesn’t mind. She exhales and pulls up her hair again to keep it off the nape of her neck, deciding she must dry off and return to the castle. She wades through the water slowly, enjoying herself and savoring the last of the moment as best she can, when—

“Hey, Adora.”

Adora blinks in surprise, half in the water, and half out. The figure comes into focus from behind a tree, and Adora goes ramrod straight.“Your Highness,” she says, flustered, cheeks red, “I didn’t realize you had woken.”

If Catra is disappointed at Adora’s overly formal reaction, she doesn’t show it. “I assumed so,” she says dryly, clicking her tongue. 

“It won’t happen again, M’Lady.”

“I’d assume not.” Here Catra’s tone has some bite. Adora knows that she does not like being addressed in such a formal manner. Adora also knows that she will lose her position should she do as Catra wishes, and Adora will always chose her duty — and her family — over a spoiled princess. She doesn’t say that, though. She can't. “Otherwise,” purrs Catra, “I’d have to tell my father.”

Adora ducks her head. She wants to ask how Catra found her, but bites her tongue. 

“You’d think,” says Catra, evidently not yet tired of her own voice, “that after three years patrolling, you’d be a little more aware of your surroundings. Or perhaps simply an unwelcome pair of eyes. I mean, it was _so_ easy,” she laughs, and her laugh is raspy and low, “to track you.”

Adora keeps her face blank and wades further out of the water, wringing out her ponytail as she does so. “I think,” she says, after a pause, “it is best if you turned your back, princess. I am indecent.”

“You’re still in your underclothes,” replies Catra, exasperated. Unlike Adora, she’s in breeches and a tunic, the cloth of her undershirt poking out behind the tunic’s collar. Adora averts her eyes. She can feel, however, as Catra watches her for a moment longer, then turns obligingly, tone annoyed as she adds, “You can be so — _traditional,_ Adora.”

Adora sighs but makes no response, moving towards her clothing and pulling her shirt over her head. It’s scratchy against her soaked undertunic, sticking to it, impeding her movement. “You know,” says Catra after a moment, “you were much more fun before you went away.” Adora flinches at this, drawing up her shoulders. “You haven’t even asked how I tracked you.” 

In the dappled light, Catra looks almost picturesque. Adora scowls at her. “I’m more puzzled how you brought yourself to wake before noon.”

“People change, Adora. You’d know that if you had stuck around.”

“I would have,” grits out Adora, “if I had had the choice.”

“You said you enjoyed it,” says Catra haughtily.

Adora turns her back on her. “My job,” she says, “is not to argue with you.”

“No,” says Catra, sugar sweet. “It’s to come up with a good lie as to why we were out here, and why I’m wearing boys’ clothes.”

Adora sighs before she can help herself, a short huff of annoyance. “We were planning to go riding today anyway,” she says shortly, pulling on her shoes. She keeps her head down even once she’s finished, focusing on Catra’s slippers rather than her face. “You wore practical clothing for the occasion.” A pause. And then, “I suppose it’s too much to hope that you managed a horse.”

Beyond her, Catra snorts, and takes a step forward. “Look up, knight,” she says, and Adora does as instructed. Catra’s close enough that she can see the beads of sweat on her forehead — a testament to the humidity, since Catra never seems bothered by the heat — and her two differently colored eyes, the most striking thing about the princess. Catra searches Adora’s face for something, and Adora stands and meets her gaze and waits.

Their noses are a fraction of a centimetre apart. Adora can practically feel Catra’s warmth radiating off of her. Catra steps away, her expression shuttering. “You underestimate me, then you overestimate me. Stealing a horse, really?” 

Adora shrugs. “Evidently I don’t know what you’re capable of.”

“Yes, evidently. Can’t we just ride Swift Wind?” Catra gestures vaguely at the horse. Adora snorts. For how Catra’s changed, her knowledge of horseback riding hasn’t improved in the past couple of years at all. 

“I suppose,” says Adora.

Catra rolls her eyes. “So unimaginative,” she says petulantly. “Was the water nice?”

“Yes,” says Adora before she can help herself, and then, realizing she’s dropped the formality, adds, “M’Lady,” as an afterthought.

“Would you return to the water with me?”

“No, M’Lady.”

“Can’t have been that nice, then, couldn’t it?”

“No, M’La—, wait, yes, it was nice, I just—”

Catra clicks her tongue at her. “You became so incredibly boring, Adora, in your time at Bright Moon.” She punctuates this by rolling her eyes and lifts her tunic over her head. Adora blushes bright red and turns around. “I might drown, you know,” says Catra, and Adora can hear her smile, “if you don’t turn around.”

Adora turns around grumpily. “Sorry, M’Lady.”

“I miss when you called me Catra,” she sighs, and Adora opens her mouth, and then closes it.

She folds her hands behind her back so as to have something to do with them. The nape of her neck itches. Adora _hates_ standing still, but does so regardless as Catra continues to strip into her undergarments, doing her best to watch without looking, to guard without — _staring._ She swallows.

“Water’s nice,” says Catra. She’s standing up to her calves in the water.

“I’m sure, M’Lady.”

“Oh, drop the formalities, Adora.”

Adora bites her lip. “I’m sorry—”

Catra exhales loudly and wades out further. Water swirls around her waist. She looks over at Adora, disappointment written plainly across her sharp features. She drags her hand through the clear river water, but her eyes remain on Adora’s face. “Are you just going to stand there in the heat, barely damp, watching me swim?”

“It will explain why you wore mens’ clothes,” says Adora after a while, processing the lie slowly. “We came out to swim, because of the heat.”

Catra rolls her eyes and scoops water over her head. The water is up to her chest now, the undertunic billowing at her waist, ghostlike in the water. Her bushy hair fans out over the river and catches in the sunlight, turning red-gold. It flows out behind her, dragging in the direction of the current. The top of her undershirt is plastered against her chest, near-translucent. Adora coughs. Her own shirt is becoming unbearably itchy.

“I miss it too,” she murmurs. Catra looks up from examining her brown arms in the riverbed, and raises an eyebrow.

“Miss what?”

“Before,” says Adora.

“ _But_ ,” says Catra mockingly before Adora can, and her briefly hopeful expression disappears. Her face darkens; her eyebrows knit. “You must think I’m so spoiled.”

“I don’t think that—”

“The princess who always gets what she wants,” continues Catra, kneeling in the water so that her shoulders are submerged. “But you left,” she says lightly, “and you think I’m mad because of something you couldn’t control. But.” Her face twists and for a moment, Adora thinks she’s holding back tears. Catra stands up, and her face clears, and the water slides down her back. Her tunic is plastered against her frame. Adora can see the ridges of her spine. “But you don’t know anything, Adora.”

“So then tell me!” Her voice is louder than she’s expecting; it volleys along the clearing and startles the birds. Catra’s perfect eyebrow raises further. Adora’s shoulders slump. “I’m sorry, princess,” she says, pursing her lips and grasping at her hands behind her back tighter. “I didn’t mean to shout.”

Catra doesn’t respond, just wades further out of the river. The cloth is transparent, stuck to her, every curve of her body clear in the summer sun, and Adora flushes and looks fixedly at the crown of Catra’s head, so as not to tempt herself to look any lower. “I think,” says Catra after a pause, voice quiet and full of some emotion Adora can’t put a finger on, “my mother is expecting me for lunch.”

Adora glances at the sky. It’s later than she expected, well into the hot afternoon by now. “What about riding?”

“It’s too hot for riding.”

“Do you want to walk back—”

“No, Adora.” She sighs again. “Your — _obtuseness_ — is tiring sometimes. I meant that as an excuse for why we went swimming instead of riding.” Adora feels her cheeks heat. “I think it best if we take Swift Wind back.” She looks at Adora for confirmation, a sort of, _is that possible_ crossed with a command.

“Of course, M’Lady,” says Adora, dipping her head.

“Of course,” repeats Catra to herself.

The ride towards the castle is quiet and tense. Adora takes care not to interact so carelessly with Catra again during the day, acting more as a shadow than a person.

Catra wakes at — she doesn’t wake early, anyway, just earlier than she used to. This remains a sticking point between them; Adora finds her annoying, frustrating, _impossible,_ as if three years destroyed whatever mutual understanding had grown in the six years before Adora’s departure. 

Either way. Adora has to rise earlier than usual to collect the horses and such for the journey, all before sunrise; she’s secretly grateful she isn’t the one to stir the princess. Adora’s good at her job, trained for it since childhood, but Catra — Catra’s _different_ than the girl she left behind. She tries not to think about it too much. She folds another blanket into the pack.

“Do you have enough water?” asks the captain of the guard, looking down at her from the steps of the stable.

“Several canteens,” says Adora. “And two pots in case it isn’t enough.”

“Several,” he repeats dryly. He towers over her in this light, the flickering torch mounted beside him casting twisting shadows across his drawn cheeks. Adora flinches. 

“Twice seven,” she says, correcting herself. “Should I ask the kitchens—”

“No,” he says. “And the princess?”

Adora opens her mouth to say, _waking the princess is not my duty_ petulantly, realizes how the guard will take it, and sighs. “She should have maids attending to her at this very moment. But,” she adds as the captain opens his mouth, “if she is not down once I have finished, I will get her myself.” She squares her shoulders to try and look more authoritative on the matter. She _does_ have work to do.

“I see,” he says, and dismisses her.

She breathes a sigh of relief and hurries to the kitchens for bread, dried meat, and cheeses. They’re set out for her — she’s been in communication with the kitchen maids for a fortnight, and so she quickly packs them in cloth and then in her satchel. Everything is going smoothly. When she looks outside, the sun has not yet quite risen.

“ _Where_ is Adora?” says Catra’s gravelly voice, unamused, floating in from the dark courtyard.

Adora lets out a breath of air. An end to the quiet morning already. “Here!” she calls, shouldering her satchel and walking out of the kitchens. She thanks the cooks as she does so and steps out into the cool air. Catra’s in her riding clothes, hair tied back into a messy ponytail, hands on her hips. The light from the torch flickers as it catches against her gold earrings and pendant lying on her chest. Firelight twists along her features, deforming and reforming them, always lovely, always too sharp. Adora clears her throat. “Are you ready to ride, princess?” 

“I thought I was going in a carriage,” responds Catra unhappily. 

“Bright Moon’s forests are not well groomed enough for carriages. It’s safer on horseback.”

“Of course _you_ would say that.” Catra crosses her arms. A wisp of hair floats down into her eyes. If she didn’t look so — so _angry,_ if it were her place, Adora might call her beautiful. “You’re always trying to make me toughen up, or something of that sort. Is that the lie you told my father?”

Adora dips her head so Catra can’t see the anger and embarrassment flushing her cheeks. “I don’t lie to your father.”

Catra opens her mouth to respond, but Adora shakes her head. “We must set out promptly, if we want to make good progress before the heat sets in.” She pulls herself onto Swift Wind, cooing gently to him. “Are you ready, M’Lady? The sun is about to rise.” Adora’s right, of course: the sky is growing light and she can make out details much further away.

“I _suppose_ ,” says Catra, sounding very displeased. “But know that I shall not enjoy this.”

Adora lifts her shoulders nonchalantly, refusing to rise to the bait so early in the morning. “We should be there in three days time.”

“Of course,” says Catra. “And not a care to how sore riding will make me.”

Adora thinks, _if you had not spent all that time hiding from your riding instructor, you would not be fearing soreness now,_ but doesn’t bring herself to say it aloud. She sees the king and queen watching from their window, and raises a hand to them before lashing her reins and setting out at a quick trot.

They travel some time with the background noise of Catra’s loud and absurd complaints — “there are bugs, Adora!” and “this path is wide enough for a carriage, you liar” — while Adora ignores her. She closes her eyes and focuses, instead, on the path ahead of them, on the summer heat slowly drifting in as the cool of night fades, on the sound of bugs and birds above them. She sighs. It’s not so bad, if she tunes Catra out.

“Are you even listening to me?”

Adora turns back to see a red-faced Catra, furious. “No,” she replies simply, knowing her own cheeks are equally red due to the warmth. She pauses for a moment before she speaks again. “I think when we get to the stream we should stop until evening.”

Catra makes a noise of protest behind her. “This is horrible,” she says, draping herself over her horse. Adora can see her out of the corner of her eye. “I didn’t even _want_ to go to Bright Moon, you know. My stupid father—” she silences herself quickly. Adora doesn’t pay it any mind. Catra’s become — _difficult._ She never says what she ought to say.

“The stream is close,” says Adora instead. “Only a little longer.”

She knows the heat doesn’t affect Catra the way it affects her. In an hour or so, sweat will roll down Adora’s back and the air will feel so sticky she’ll want to draw her blade to part it. But Catra remains lithe and quick-footed in the summertime, even when the guards suited to the heat melt against their posts. What is buckets of sweat for Adora is droplets for Catra.

Adora doesn’t even know what Catra has to complain about; the bugs prefer to bite Adora, who is more reactive anyway and comes out of summers in Half Moon red and puffy because of the bites; the heat is worse for Adora; Adora has more responsibility — she sighs she stops herself from thinking about it, staring determinedly at the line of trees ahead.

Thinking about why Catra suddenly hates her only serves to make Adora angry.

Adora doesn’t even know what she’s done wrong.

They dismount at the river and Adora exhales. She leads the horses to the bank and ties them up so they can reach the water as they please. Afterwards, she settles against a rock and rests on it; the morning’s activities are catching up with her. Beyond her, Catra begins to pace and speak. “Even so far from the castle,” begins Catra, and Adora closes her eyes for a moment, enjoying the sunshine on her face, “you refuse to strip and bathe with me.”

“It isn’t right, princess.”

“You’ll be a lady soon, anyway.”

“A lord,” corrects Adora, peaking open an eye to look at Catra curiously. The princess has found a rock and is lying on it, clothes unbuttoned so that her undergarments are peeking out. Adora spies her sternum, the curve of her neck, the— she flushes. “Why do you care, anyway?”

“I don’t,” says Catra flippantly. “It’s just — rather _sad,_ to see you sweat without reprieve.”

Adora raises an eyebrow doubtfully. “I won’t be a lord for some time,” she says.

“My marriage isn’t so far off,” responds Catra, less flippant and more — and _more_ — Adora doesn’t want to think about it. “I can’t postpone finding a fiancé many more winters, or else I’ll just be a spinster, and what good would that do for the kingdom?” She looks a little hysterical. Adora fights the urge to reach out and hold her, despite the air becoming thicker and more humid with each hour.

Adora frowns. This has always been a sore spot for Catra. “M’Lady—”

“Why do you even call me that?”

“Because it’s ri—”

“Because you didn’t used to.” Catra sits up and walks toward her, and her opened top flaps on her chest, drawing Adora’s attention to it. She swallows and forces herself to focus on Catra’s face. “I used to think we would be friends forever, and that I’d spend my summers down at Grayskull, even, just for you.”

Adora lowers her head and doesn’t speak. She doesn’t have anything to say that won’t just inflame Catra more. “I don’t understand,” continues Catra, and she’s so close, and Adora’s so _hot,_ she can barely think, let alone breathe, “what happened. I mean, I know Grayskull is a lovely chateau, but _Half Moon—”_

“Catra,” says Adora finally, out of breath and desperate.

Catra smiles, snakelike, catlike, the corners of her pink mouth lifting upward. “Come swim with me, Adora,” she says, less pleadingly and more like she knows already Adora will say yes. She’s too close to Adora, who can feel the princess’ warmth, and the sun is beating down again on her own clothed figure. Adora breathes in dust and humidity, and she thirsts. 

“Fine,” she says after a moment. “But not a word of this—” She cuts herself off. 

“You think so little of me,” hisses Catra in her ear, beginning to unbutton the rest of her petticoat. When Adora looks at her, she realizes Catra doesn’t look so confident anymore, just genuinely hurt.

“Um.” She blinks. “Sorry.”

Catra rolls her eyes. “Whatever. Come swim with me.”

And Adora does, careful as before not to let her gaze wander. She strips into her undertunic and braie, then rolls the longer sleeves of her undertunic to make short sleeves. She looks over at Catra, pulling down her braie so that the shorts cover her fully, and Catra meets her gaze for half a second before turning away and flushing. She’s in just a shift. Adora looks away as well.

Instead, she turns her eyes towards the water, sluggish because of the heat and hyper aware of Catra beside her, watching her. She breathes in slowly, then edges her toes towards the river, eyeing the mossy rocks and the grassy bank. The grass sinks beneath her bare feet as she pads towards the water.

Catra, beside her, moves faster, less affected by the sunlight and dense air. She’s already sitting at the bank with her feet in the water — picturesque, ladylike, not delicate but something refined that Adora can’t quite put her finger on — and then she slides into the water with barely a sound, finding footing in a sandy patch and pulling her shift down as it balloons around her.

The cloth is shockingly pale against her brown skin, and Adora watches quietly as she dips her own feet into the water. She’s distracted, momentarily, by the near-sweetness of the cold river, and sighs into it, lowering herself into the depths as she savors it. Her foot catches on a slippery rock and for a couple seconds she’s pinwheeling before she grabs the bank and huffs out a sigh.

Catra’s watching her with a strange look on her face, so distracted that she doesn’t even laugh.

Adora blinks. She’s about to say something, when she realizes that the shift is sticking to Catra’s stomach, translucent, and Adora can see her navel. She swallows and looks down at her own white tunic and braie, which are turning translucent themselves. “Oh,” she mumbles, and Catra looks at her with some surprise, as if stirring from a spell.

“Yeah,” says the princess quietly, softly, and scoops some water over her head. The droplets cascade down her brown waves, and Adora is, for a moment, transfixed. She watches the goosepimples forming on Catra’s arms and shoulders. Where the water touches her shift, it sticks to her slender form. 

The sun is warm against Adora’s face, neck, and back — a suddenly pleasant contrast to the frigidy of the stream — but she feels no more energetic than before. Catra begins to wade further, deeper, and Adora suddenly is struck by an urge to follow her out of the shallows. Catra notices this, looking at Adora and then past her, like she wasn’t actually studying how Adora’s tunic sticks to Adora’s muscles, to her arms, to her chest — 

Neither of them say anything, but keep their gazes trained fully upward, to each other’s shoulders, collarbones, and faces. Adora knows her cheeks are flushed. Her hair is curling, too, in the heat, and none of it is attractive, exactly, but she can’t bring herself to care in this silent, content moment with Catra.

It reminds her of three years ago, but the thought scares her with its hopefulness, and so she pushes it away. She moves closer towards Catra, as if drawn into orbit.

“Are you just following me?”

Adora rolls her eyes. “Always,” she says, smirking over at Catra. “It’s my duty.”

Catra pauses, then, and places her hands on her hips. The water is at her sternum now, so all Adora sees is the rise and fall of her tanned, freckled shoulders. She looks at Adora inquisitively, as if she’s trying to place this answer into her understanding of post-Bright-Moon Adora. Post-patrolled-along-the-border-so-as-to-fend-off-the-Horde Adora. And Adora burns to hold her.

Her shoulders rise and fall again — a deep breath. And then she wades towards Adora, silent, but with a soft smile over her lips. Adora waits for her, unmoving, like Catra’s a deer that might startle with sudden movement. She watches the princess’ collarbones come into focusview, sharp and lined, dark against the softness of her shift.

Catra reaches Adora quickly, parting the water with her hands as she drifts towards her. “Hey, Adora,” she says, voice low and rough, and Adora stifles a shiver.

“Hey, Catra,” she says right back, her own voice surprisingly steady, but soft, tender, full with the care for the princess she hasn’t felt — hasn't allowed herself to feel — in so long —

Catra moves past her. “We should dry off,” says Catra suddenly, and Adora steels herself, nods. She’s supposed to be Catra’s guardian, protector, watcher, not — not — she can’t think the word. She won’t let herself.

Adora allows herself a moment to wade upstream, away from Catra’s eyes. The river curves in such a way that if Adora calls, the echo will reach Catra, and vice versa, but she’s finally gotten a moment alone. Slightly overwhelmed by the river, by the sight of Catra, she finds the isolation comforting, and takes a deep breath.

The sky is blue and clear. Above the water, teal dragonflies flit from rock to patch of moss. She finds a shady patch and a rock, and rests against it, enjoying the view for a moment longer, and then rests her eyes, shuttering them closed. Her limbs, loosened by the cold stream, feel suddenly very heavy, and she drifts off.

It’s a short nap by anyone’s standards, hardly twenty minutes. Yet she’s startled awake by cries of her name. Adora pushes herself off from her rock and hurries to the site where she left Catra. It’s barely a five minute walk, but in that time Catra’s gone strangely silent. Worry slicks her insides, and she curses herself for thinking she could leave for even a moment.

“Catra…?”

She bursts into the clearing where they left their packs and the horses. Her eyes immediately land on the hilt of her sword, peeking out from the pile of their packs.

Catra’s hunched over and on her knees. When she hears her name, she straightens and wipes at her face violently. Adora notices, with some surprise, that Catra’s cheeks are streaky and glistening in the light. “What...what happened?” she asks, suddenly concerned, as she approaches Catra carefully.

“You _disappeared_ ,” snaps Catra, wiping now at her wet cheeks. “I thought...I wasn’t sure where you went.”

“I wouldn’t leave you,” says Adora fervently.

“How could I have known that?” Catra heaves a sigh and turns her back to Adora. “I don’t even know the way back.”

Adora wants to point out that the path is pretty straightforward, but decides against it. “I’m sorry,” she settles on, surprised at Catra’s reaction and unsure what else to say. Catra, still turned away from her, lifts her shoulders in a shrug. Adora frowns. She finds her sudden leverage over Catra unsettling.

They set out along the river for a little longer once the heat has burnt off, and Catra is strangely silent. Adora burns to watch her instead of the path ahead of them, burns to study Catra instead of the landscape for a place to settle for the night. Instead, she forces her gaze forward.

Catra doesn’t complain as Adora sweeps the trees, and then the grassy forest floor, looking for a clearing. The dusty path beneath them, the hot summer sun — it melts her, cooks her, but she only feels for the phantom limb behind her, a girl on horseback, someone Adora’s beginning to realize she only ever thought she knew.

They don’t speak. Adora keeps looking forward.

It feels like she’s forgetting something, but in chasing the thought she stumbles across the word she won’t think, and so she settles back into determined concentration, wiping sweat off her brow as she leads Swift Wind towards a campsite. Dusk approaches faster. Her hair is still damp against her clothing, and she can’t stop thinking of Catra in a wet shift, smiling softly at her.

When Adora finally chooses a spot, the sky is bruising purple and stars are beginning to show themselves. Their shadows ebb and fade away with the sunset so that dusk makes everything blurry but not invisible. She finds rocks, leaves, twigs, and sticks for the fire quickly, rushed by Catra’s silent judgement. It eats at her.

They snack on dried fruit, cheese, and a fish Adora caught earlier by fashioning a makeshift spear, so as to stave Catra’s complaints over dried meat a day longer. Adora boils some water from the streambed for them in order to purify it, then refills their canteens and leaves them out to cool. “If we run out of meat,” says Adora, “I can also catch us some rabbits. It will take some time to skin and prepare them, however.” She swallows. Catra is still quiet.

“Okay,” says Catra finally, and stands up and away from the fire. The shadows flicker over her face.

“Is it?” Adora watches her carefully.

“I—” Catra blinks, then bobs her head. “Yes.” She raises an eyebrow at Adora, folds her arms across her chest, stance suddenly defensive. Adora looks up at her, waiting, watching. “Why does it matter whether or not I’m okay? Your concern is your duty, and your duty is my safety, is it not?” 

“Yes, but—”

“Yes, but,” mocks Catra. “It’s always _yes_ and _but_ to me, isn’t it.”

“I don’t understand why you’re angry,” says Adora softly. “I swam with you today — per your request — I kept us out of the heat, I—” (I left you alone, she thinks, and it scared you).

“Adora, I don’t _care,_ ” Catra snaps. “We can pretend to like each other all we want, but that’s never going to be the case. The moment you got out of Half Moon, you relaxed. You don’t think I didn’t notice it? I know—” she swallows, “I know you won’t return, once my father raises your rank to lord.”

Adora clenches her fist but remains silent. Of course the softness wouldn’t last.

“I used to think I was worth something to you, but now—” Catra lets out a wet laugh, and Adora, through her anger, her _frustration,_ represses the urge to go over to her and hold her. “Now I am wiser and less idealistic. I am an opportunity. A job done well. But don’t worry, Adora, I shan’t torture you much longer. I will be married soon.”

Adora’s nails, though short, begin to dig into her palm. She bites the inside of her cheek. A word echoes inside her head, but she can’t think it, she just keeps clenching and biting and ignoring the stinging in her eyes.

“And then,” continues Catra, voice broken and quiet, “you will be done. I won't be your problem any more.”

“Stop,” gasps Adora, finally, finally. “Please, princess, stop.”

Catra snorts and says, “What does it matter to you?”

“It _matters,”_ whispers Adora, feeling the crescent moon shapes in her palms. “You matter. I would have, you know. I would have—” She cuts herself off. There are a thousand things Adora would have done. She can’t come up with the right way to say it, to properly convey the ache in her chest when Catra mentions marriage.

“I’d like to believe that, too,” says Catra softly, and stalks towards her bedding.

Adora pokes at the fire so as to stir it, and watches it thoughtlessly. She watches the stars above her twinkle and, to calm herself, goes through the constellations, recounting the myths to herself. Her thoughts, however, keep returning to Catra. She always finds herself returning to Catra. she thinks of her hours of peace beside her — what is Adora doing wrong? She scrubs her eyes at the question and looks back to where Catra is trying to sleep, shoulders too stiff to actually have drifted off.

Though it’s horribly warm, and Adora’s skin still feels trapped and sweaty underneath her clothing, she fights off the urge to go over to the princess, to kiss her cheek and the corner of her mouth the way Adora would have, four or five years ago, to hold her and tickle her until she told Adora her ache.

Because Adora can see Catra’s aching — her big, metaphorical, gaping wound held together by bandages and an arm clutched around it — and it stings not to be privy to it.

Adora swallows and looks up again, watching a bat swoop over her head, watching the smoke from their fire twist upwards into the vast blue vaulted sky, watching the tops of trees tremble in the light breeze. Her limbs are heavy with exhaustion, eyes drooping; the wind whistles and Adora sighs with it.

Catra is — for once — up before Adora. When Adora opens her eyes, Catra’s already prepared breakfast, fed the horses, and packed up her own things. “Hey, Adora,” she says, when she sees Adora sitting up and rubbing her eyes, “I — All you have to do is repack your bags. I did everything else.”

Adora blinks at her. She scratches her head. It’s still dark, but the sky is quickly turning heather grey instead of deep blue-black, and in the light Catra looks younger, calmer, less — less — Adora can’t place it. “I — thank you,” she manages, when Catra crosses her arms in a _‘well? did I do okay?’_ sort of gesture.

“You’re welcome,” says Catra primly. Even the ugly burn where the fire had been has been cleared up, so they can’t be tracked; Adora notes this with a raised eyebrow but doesn’t say any more. “You sleep like a log,” she adds, not bothering to clarify what _that_ means, and Adora blushes.

“Years of sleeping in loud places, I guess,” she offers.

“Right. Anyway, we should get started.”

And then it hits Adora — this is an _apology._ Catra doing all this work for her. An apology for yesterday, maybe, and she pauses, and she must be looking at Catra with an expression of — gratitude, maybe, and some confusion, because Catra goes, “What, I can’t do anything nice for you, ever?” 

“No, no, I don’t mean to be ungrateful—”

“Come on, then,” says the princess, and Adora snorts, and goes to mount Swift Wind.

The journey isn’t so loud as yesterday; Adora didn’t miss the bags under Catra’s eyes. The princess is quiet and peaceful. When Adora looks back at her, Catra’s slumping in the saddle of her own pitch black horse, eyes lidded and looking like she’s dreaming. For once, her sharp features are soft with sleepiness. Her earrings gleam in the sunlight.

Adora ducks her head and smiles, watching the river twist along the path. It’s not hot yet; the bugs are silent, and the birds chirp more brightly than in the afternoon, where all creatures turn sluggish. The crows croak to one another; the sparrows chirp, the whitethroats warble; Swift Wind, below her, huffs against her soft touch.

They come, inevitably, to a crossroads: one path crosses the river and then runs towards the East; another moves northwards. The river itself twists to the West. Adora slows Swift Wind down here and hesitates, knowing her duty but drawn to the East nonetheless. “Well?” says Catra behind her, voice thick with drowsiness. “Do you not know where we’re going?”

“I do,” says Adora dumbly. “That way’s just — the eastern path is towards my home.” She knows she should have rephrased it the moment it’s come out of her mouth, and tenses inwardly for Catra’s inevitable anger. Catra remains silent, and the moment drags on, and Adora tears her eyes away from the road to her village, to her mothers, and motions towards the other path.

“That’s not the way to Grayskull,” says Catra, after a moment, not angry but — confused. 

“Grayskull isn’t my home yet,” replies Adora. The path is wider now, and fields of wheat and barley are beginning to stretch out on their left as they move towards Bright Moon. On their right, the forest continues to loom, casting its shadow over the road, keeping the heat somewhat at bay.

Catra’s horse trots up beside Adora — there’s room, now, for the two of them — and she peers at Adora curiously. “Then where—?”

Adora turns her head to hide her flush. “My village,” she says, quiet.

Catra remains silent at this, and Adora peeks over at her, startled by how genuinely interested she looks. “This is where you went, when you would leave Half Moon to visit your mothers?” Her cheeks are darken with embarrassment when she realizes how the question sounds. “Sorry, I’m just curious.”

“It’s okay,” says Adora, smiling. “Yes, this is where I went.”

“I knew—” Catra cuts herself off. Adora wonders what Catra knows. Does she know that Adora’s mother was the village healer, the village witch, that Mara was a serf to the king? Does she know how many nights Adora cried in bed for missing them? Does she know— “Did you miss them, when you were in Bright Moon?”

Adora knows what’s coming. “Yes,” she says, anyway.

“Did you miss—” Catra can’t complete it. Her lips purse and then screw up.

“Yes,” whispers Adora. _Yes, I missed you._

Catra’s eyes go wide, surprise etched on her face. And then, after a split second — so sudden that Adora doubts Catra was surprised at all — she looks pleased. On her, with her sharp cheekbones and ridged nose and deep brown skin, pleasure looks royal and — and _right._ Pleasure looks — Adora doesn’t complete that thought, but deep in her bones something itches to make Catra look like that all the time.

“Oh,” Catra says, and smiles, and turns away to look at the wheat.

Adora smiles and looks ahead. For a little while longer, as they trot side-by-side, Catra asks soft questions about Mara and Razz and village life, and Adora answers her, the memories warm and fond, honeysweet in her mind and on her tongue. It feels like something’s shifting, but she can’t place a finger on what.

They eventually dismount, and Adora steers them off the path into the forest when the sun becomes too blindingly powerful and the trees’ shadows dwindle to nothing. She brings them to a pool to allow the horses to drink and to rest, since she knows Catra must be sore from riding yesterday.

She tugs at her clothing, laying her sword down and exposing her undertunic, placing each discarded garment onto a rock to warm and bake while she swims. Catra, she notices, is silent, watching her, unmoving. “Are you not going to swim?” asks Adora, hushed, surprised. Perhaps Catra only wanted Adora to swim with her once.

“No, I—” Catra swallows. “Your back, Adora.”

_Oh._ Her undertunic must have ridden up. Soft scars line Adora’s back, fading, but ever-present, ever obvious, shaped like claw marks. Adora tugs down the cloth self consciously. “I’m sorry, princess,” she says, awkward, “I shouldn’t have undressed so quickly, I—”

Catra reaches out to touch her, to hush her, and Adora takes a step back. “Don’t apologize,” says Catra. “What happened?” She knows Adora must have obtained them some time during Adora’s years on the borders of Bright Moon; Adora can see her building understanding etched across her expression.

Adora sighs and lowers herself to the bank, finding a rock to at least dip her feet into for some reprieve. The water is cold, as always, and it clears her head for a moment. “The Horde,” she says, simply, referring to the kingdom beyond Bright Moon. “There was a skirmish over whether or not we’d crossed the border.”

Catra knows the Horde has been looking to attack Bright Moon for years now. She’s listening more attentively, partially concerned, but partially with a glint in her eye, hungry for information, to plan. _Politics._ Adora’s never cared for it. “How did they — why did nothing come out of it?”

Adora shrugs. “I don’t know. I passed out,” she says, and then sighs. Her scars are a sign of the Horde’s brutality — they didn’t come to just kill her, but to maim her while they were at it. She shivers at the thought, of being another scarred corpse at the border. “I don’t want to talk about this, Catra.”

Catra blinks, nods. “I understand. Shall we—” she motions towards the water.

Adora doesn’t need any more permission; she slips into the pool without any more prompting, and Catra follows close behind her. She’s careful, this time, though, not to let herself get carried away: she’s painfully reminded of her position, to watch Catra, and nothing more, like an artifact hung up on castle walls — appreciate, keep safe, never touch.

They set out again when the heat has burned off some more. Catra’s acting strange again, and Adora knows it’s because of her scars, and she’s _tired_ of being treated any differently because of them. “Well?” she snaps eventually, startling Catra and Swift Wind both. “You clearly have something to say.”

  
  
“I just don’t like,” says Catra eventually, slowly, like she’s trying not to anger Adora, “that Bright Moon didn’t notify us about what happened.”

Adora lifts her shoulders to shrug. “Bright Moon found a solution to the problem, somehow,” she says. “I suppose they didn’t need to do any more notifying or asking for more knights, or anything else.” She still doesn’t know what the solution was; how could Adora have fought for three years for them, and still not know?

It’s Catra’s turn to be nonchalant. “And then you came home,” she says, like it’s that simple.

Adora snorts.

“I know,” says Catra finally, after a long pause, “that you think I’m spoiled and horrible.”

Adora opens her mouth to answer that, to protest, and — drowsy with heat and the exertion of swimming, struggles to come up with a good answer. “No,” she ends up with, lamely. “I just. I just—”

“You don’t have to be horrible to me, though, you know, when I’m actually trying, for once,” snaps Catra back. 

Adora turns her head to look at Catra. She looks tired, and damp, and hot, and uncomfortable, shifting like she’s sore from sleeping on the ground and from riding a horse, hair up and out of her face but still falling out of its updo, necklace in her bag because the metal got too warm. Adora opens her mouth. Closes it.

“And you never talk back,” says Catra. “I don’t understand. I’m nice to you, and you’re mad at me; I’m mean to you, and you go mute.” Her horse underneath her neighs. “I’m just — what am I doing wrong?”

Adora thinks, desperately, of a thousand answers she cannot say, and settles on one. “It’s not your fault,” she says, eventually, “that I am beneath you. But you don’t respect that. You and I will never be equals, princess, know this.” She looks out ahead of her, face burning with anger, with — _longing._

“We were, once,” says Catra. Her tone is pleading.

“We never were.”

Catra goes silent. “You didn’t feel it before,” she amends, and Adora concedes this to be true.

“Three years is a long time,” is all Adora says, and lashes her reins to set out in front of Catra, unable to say anything more.

When Adora was eleven, she met Catra and Swift Wind and her sword, all in one go. She’d been quiet, then, not because Adora is naturally quiet, but because Half Moon was so much _more_ than home, and what made Adora sophisticated in her village was never enough in the castle. But Catra didn’t mind; even though Adora was to be her personal protector, less than a shadow, Catra didn’t mind.

Sometimes Adora remembers this suddenly: Catra, holding out her favorite book to Adora; Catra, eyes crinkling at the edges at Adora’s joke; Catra, tucked under Adora’s chin. 

Sometimes Adora feels like she’s doomed to orbit her, to watch, never to touch.

Adora writes a letter home by the firelight. She’s pointedly not talking to Catra, trying to concentrate on writing. They had another fish for dinner, roasted, since they ate too much dried meat in the afternoon. The silence is taut between them. Adora tries to remember her Latin — Razz always prefers to have her letters in Latin, and finds she can’t remember the word for ‘stars’, despite her many years as a child spent studying the language.

It’s on the tip of her tongue. She looks pleadingly at the night sky for the word.

Catra moves over next to her, silent, careful, and Adora watches her, instead. Catra never apologizes, she knows, but she’s burning for one. “Are you praying?” says Catra finally, voice scratchy. Adora shifts her gaze from Catra to beyond her, to the shadowy woods just out of the firelight’s reach.

“No.”

“You’re angry with me.”

“Yes.”

Catra huffs. “I didn’t know this was such a sore topic.”

Adora watches the shadows flicker across a nearby tree trunk instead of Catra’s face. The clearing is beside a small stream, grassy-soft, which trickles gently. The birds aren’t singing anymore, it’s too late, but the noise of the crickets and the water and the crackling fire fills the silence between them. 

Catra tries again. “Don’t be angry with me.”

Adora opens her mouth, closes it. She chooses not to say anything at all. Instead, she looks down at her letter and tries to remember the word.

Catra stands up, frustrated, and stalks towards Adora, around the fire. Her eyebrows are drawn close and her already dramatic features are heightened by the shadows cutting across them. “I can never do anything right by you,” she says, almost angrily. “All I do is succeed in making you frustrated. And I — why do I care?”

Adora keeps her head low.

“Not that that matters,” she snaps, moving closer towards Adora. Her dress swishes with each step; Adora notes how the mud has darkened the hem. “I’m not allowed, you know,” she says, and swallows. “I can taunt and tease as I should like, but I’m not allowed to — to—” She cuts off suddenly and turns her focus more onto Adora. “Say something,” she says.

Adora continues looking down.

“Say something. I command you.”

When Adora looks up, when she says, “That’s the problem, princess. You always command me,” Catra’s look of anger and haughtiness transforms into bittersweet regret.

“Not always,” she whispers.

“Then tell me,” snaps Adora, “why you began.”

Catra studies her for a long time, pulling her hair back as she does so. The fire crackles behind her; she casts a long shadow over Adora’s face. Her expression shifts subtly several times, each unreadable, all painful to watch, and then, defeated, she sits beside Adora, not quite close enough to touch, but enough for Adora to have to resist the urge to hold her. “I can’t,” she says, after a pause. “Then you will never forgive me. I’m sorry.”

It’s the first time Catra’s apologized since Adora returned from Bright Moon; perhaps it’s the first time Catra’s apologized ever. 

“Oh,” says Adora awkwardly, stiltedly, anger suddenly gone and replaced by something more difficult to understand, more difficult to shape into anything useful. “It’s alright, I suppose. It’s not my duty—”

“Lots of things aren’t your duty,” interrupts Catra. “Yet you still do them. You’re a good person, Adora,” she says, and her expression twists again, painful and some truth hidden in it that Adora can’t — perhaps will never — quite understand. With a rustling of her dress, Catra gets up suddenly, and in the firelight Adora catches a final glimpse of her freckles before she turns away, and the muddied hem drags along Adora’s shoe for half a second.

Adora swallows and remembers the word she needed. _Astra._

Adora rises at dawn, woken this time by her scars’ aching, but Catra is — once more — awake before her. “Hey, Adora,” she purrs, the indescribable longing and sadness gone from her expression, replaced by a mischievous smile. Everything is packed again. She’s even buried the remains of the fireplace. Adora blinks at her, confused, but also understanding that this is another silent apology.

She accepts it. “It’s going to rain,” she says gently, and rubs her back. 

“How do you know?”

“I ache,” says Adora simply, “before it rains.”

Catra accepts this. It’s a difficult dance between them; unsaid things accepted and interpreted as the other wishes. Sometimes Adora wonders if Catra wants what Adora wants, what Adora burns for, but she can never ask, can never initiate it herself. “You know,” says Catra, soft, “that I almost ran away two nights ago and completed the journey myself.”

Adora snorts. “And died in the process?”

Catra’s shy smile is enough. “Perhaps,” she admits, and then adds, “I didn’t leave because I knew I’d get lost.”

And then Adora understands what Catra’s saying without saying it: _you have power, too, in these woods. We are equal here; I am bound to you as you are bound to me._ Invisible chains between them. Unseen threads. She bobs her head, struck by the same word she’s been trying to hide from all this time, and Catra’s smile becomes more toothy as she realizes Adora understands.

“Do you think, then,” she says, “we will be able to ride all day, or do you think we will be forced to wait another night?”

“Depends on the heaviness of rainfall,” responds Adora, and hoists herself onto Swift Wind with a secret smile. 

They ride, for the most part, in silence, save for when they pass the summer blooming flowers, which Adora names for Catra, until Catra begins to ask about trees, and herbs as well, and then strange birdsong, and Adora laughs and shares each word with her, the secrets of the forest no longer hers alone. 

Catra’s quick to learn them, too, and begins to point out flowers and trees and birdsong before Adora can. Adora thinks that perhaps in another life Catra would make a good tracker, then thinks about when Catra found her swimming a couple days ago, and realizes that Catra _is_ a good tracker, even before she knew all these things.

It confuses her, this dichotomy of the princess: spoiled, haughty, even petty versus the quick, sly, observational princess that hides below the surface. Perhaps Catra doesn’t see it herself. Adora doesn’t mention it, though, just points to another tree and says, “oak,” as Catra assures her she knew that.

It begins to rain an hour into the journey, and the sky swells with thick, grey, puffy clouds. It’s still hot and sticky, and the water that hits Adora’s skin is warm and pleasant; the rain is gentle enough not to muddy the path too much for the horses, and though Catra begins to complain about being _wet_ and _catching a cold,_ Adora understands by now she doesn’t really mean it.

The humidity curls Adora’s hair and turns her cheeks red, and the rain plasters it against her skin. Swift Wind below her whinnies softly, but seems pleased as well — though the rain isn’t a real respite from the horrible heat, it’s better than it was before. Only Catra seems truly inconvenienced by the weather. 

“I cannot wait,” says Catra shrilly, “to be out of this country.”

“It can be very cold in Bright Moon,” warns Adora. “And wet.”

Catra _humphs_ behind her. Adora bites back a smile. There’s an easy quietness between them, while rain drips through the thatched roof of foliage above them. Eventually the humidity makes her clothing stick to her back, and even her breathing becomes heavy, though when she looks back to Catra she notes that the same isn’t true for the princess. 

She hums to distract herself from the uncomfortable stickiness and watches the forest go by. Unbidden, memories appear: of her childhood spent watching over Catra as a keeper, as a best friend; of her mothers, so far away now; of the terrible three years she spent defending Bright Moon’s border. Behind her, Catra rides, unworried.

Adora wonders, for the first time, if she can really trust the Bright Moon court to keep Catra safe. 

“You’re stressed,” observes Catra behind her, and Adora jumps in her seat with Swift Wind. Before Adora can ask how Catra can be so observant, Catra adds, somewhat haughtily, “your silence got more stressed,” as if that explains anything. Adora realizes Catra can’t explain her powers of observation any better than Adora can.

“I — yeah. I spent three years fighting off the Horde,” says Adora.

“You aren’t supposed to call them that anymore,” responds Catra. “We’re supposed to call them by their kingdom’s real name.”

“We can’t really just be expected to trust them, can we?” barrels on Adora. “I mean, they killed and tortured so many Bright Moon knights. And Hordak—”

“Adora,” says Catra sharply. “Don’t do this to yourself. Bright Moon is safe, and _King_ Hordak is no longer a threat. My father wouldn’t send me into a war zone, would he?” The last part is strangely bitter; Adora swivels in her saddle to look at Catra clearly. There’s some — betrayed, maybe — expression splayed across her features, and not for the first time, Adora longs to reach out and comfort her.

“We should stop for a break,” she says instead, pointing to a beech tree. “That should provide good cover for the rain.”

“It’s like a tent!” says Catra in wonder, surveying how the beech’s branches slope down to the forest floor, creating a sort of empty space between the trunk and the circle that the branches form where they touch the dirt. Adora grins at her, leading Swift Wind in, and pouring water out into a pot for him. 

“Pretty great, huh?”

“Yeah,” says Catra, beginning to pull off her dress.

“Wait—”

“What? My clothes are wet.”

Adora frowns and thinks about it. “If you want to dry them, we should find a cave and light a fire.” 

Catra pauses and appears to count something on her fingers. “Do we reach Bright Moon tonight or tomorrow morning? If tonight, we should dry off — if tomorrow morning…” she trails off and lifts an eyebrow in Adora’s direction, eyes wide and pleading. “It wouldn’t _hurt_ to go swimming one final time, would it?” 

“We arrive tonight.” Adora shifts in her place. “But we always have the way back.”

That seems to upset Catra more than anything else. “Right,” she says, face shutting down, and begins to button up the front of her dress. 

Adora opens her mouth, closes it. Catra won’t look her in the eye. “I saw a cave over by the river a little ways ahead. We just have to wade across…” 

Something blooms in her chest when Catra looks up and at her, smile playing across her face. “You wouldn’t be saying that just to make _me_ happy, would you?” teases Catra, and though Adora rolls her eyes, she loves seeing Catra like this, wishes she could memorialize it: messy, half-on petticoat, hair falling out of its updo and curling as a halo around her face, cheeks dusty red and freckles more pronounced than ever. “What?” says Catra. 

“Nothing,” says Adora. “Let’s go find that river.”

It’s a short walk on foot, leading the horses to the cover of another tree. The rain is easing now, which helps, and Adora is quick to make a fire and to hang up their clothes to dry. Catra pulls off her shift this time, revealing a bra and underwear; Adora’s mouth dries suddenly. “I don’t want to get my newly dry clothing wet again,” explains Catra. Adora nods, unable to do anything else.

They run into the river, then, and like always, it’s cold, but compared to the horrible wet stickiness of the air, Adora is contented. Catra wades deep, like always, until she’s up to her shoulders, whereas Adora sticks to where the water level is at her waist. They eye each other across the river, tracing the other’s shapes and curves; Adora is suddenly self-conscious of the way her undertunic clings to her muscles.

The air grows thicker between them. Adora can’t help but notice Catra’s more exposed form, dark against her white undergarments, freckled across her shoulders. Her neck is long and slender, and she twists gracefully as she swims through a particularly deep patch. “What are you looking at?” she calls to Adora, and her voice is happy and carefree.

“You,” calls back Adora, laughing. “You better not die.”

“Come over here and save me then,” responds Catra, pretending to plaster herself against a rock and acting like the current is pulling her away.

Adora snorts but wades deeper, half paddling towards her and half jumping. “What would you do without me,” she says. 

“I don’t know,” responds Catra, suddenly serious, as Adora reaches her on her rock. They don’t touch — they never do — but they orbit closer, hovering, and Catra unlatches from the rock and stands up straight to face Adora. There’s something searching in her gaze, the way her mouth quirks upward, and all of Adora aches, burns, longs to close the distance and settle her hands on her waist, on her cheeks, in her hair.

Catra’s hands lift as if feeling the same magnetic impulse. The water flows between them, a quiet rushing sound, just loud enough that Adora can’t make out her breathing from the trickling and splashing of water over rocks. They each take another step closer, not touching but about to, and Catra angles her head up, just a fraction of an inch, so that their lips could slot together if she just —

“Adora,” Catra whispers, and then ducks out of the way. “Adora, I can’t.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” says Adora, trying to recover from the moment and pull herself back together.

Catra looks at Adora for a long time, as if deciding what to say, and then she turns, and Adora allows herself a second to admire the straight line of her back. “I’m sorry,” she says, and it’s the second time Adora’s really ever heard her apologize. Adora lets out a breath of air. “I wanted — I _want_ to.”

“But,” Adora says for her, and Catra nods.

“But,” she echoes, and sighs.

There’s an instant in which Adora thinks Catra is going to hug her, but instead she pushes past Adora, never once touching her, and wades toward the cave, presumably to check on the dryness of the clothes.

Adora allows herself a moment to breathe out quickly and recover, then follows the princess up to complete their journey to Bright Moon.

The rest of the ride is spent eating and not speaking, an easy but contemplative silence between them, as if they both know what they want but cannot have. And Adora _knows_ what she can’t have, but all she can think about is how she could. She’ll be a lord soon, Catra’s right, and of the right station to court a princess, even though — it pains her to remember this — her lordship is contingent on Catra being married. She can only ever become a lord once Catra has a fiancé. 

Catra, behind her, seems unbothered by this. But she’s good at seeming unbothered, complaining about the drizzling rain at various intervals as they ride towards Bright Moon. Adora is suddenly grateful that the king had the foresight to send their luggage ahead of them. Adora rolls her shoulders. The weather is making her joints ache.The knowledge that a bed, and their own, clean clothes, will be ready for them is comforting.

Bright Moon is in the middle of a forest, and as they tread deeper, Adora notes the difference between these and the trees in Half Moon. Oaks have given their way to evergreens, and though still warm, it’s not nearly as unbearably hot as it was. Adora has missed Bright Moon — she made good friends here, she intrinsically understands the landscape — and so, as the path widens, Adora’s spirits rise.

The dirt slowly becomes cobblestone, and they begin to see cottages off in the distance. “It’s quaint,” says Catra condescendingly, and then, “I see why you like it here.” The disdain does not disappear from her expression.

Adora rolls her eyes and they carry on.

Slowly the trees thin out into stumps and then into grassy fields where animals roam. Pigs, horses, and sheep all watch from their pens as Adora and Catra pass them. The sky is starting to color with oranges and reds. They’re nearly there. A couple farmers leave their stoops to inspect them, and Adora lifts a hand. She picked out Bright Moon colors for her riding outfit; they wave back.

“Do you know everyone here?” says Catra disapprovingly.

“I’m wearing Bright Moon’s colors.”

A judgemental silence in response. Adora adds, “It’s safer.”

Catra doesn’t say anything else. 

They cross into fields of wheat and barley, which stretch as golden hills for miles. Adora mentions offhandedly that she used to help the mill as a child and Catra stops being so grumpy when she listens to a story about the owner. She asks a couple questions about how flour is made, which Adora is embarrassed is admit she never really understood, and they lapse into silence again. 

The sky is deep bruised purple by the time they reach the city of Bright Moon, which is lit by torches. The city is built on a river, Catra points out slyly. Adora laughs but doesn’t suggest they swim, though she knows Catra wants to. Instead, she surveys the city itself, with its cathedral’s spindly detailing. Daunting gargoyles line its roof. 

The streets are impossibly narrow as they ride through them; market stalls are propped against building walls haphazardly, while the houses loom, tall but thin. Their wood beams are painted different colors: blue, orange, pink. Bright Moon is messy, claustrophobic, _beautiful,_ and despite all the hardship Adora endured on the border, its city still feels like home.

She feels a twinge of guilt at this admittance, with Catra behind her, but Adora knows she can’t have what she wants in Half Moon, anyway.

“Wow,” says Catra quietly.

Adora silently agrees with her. Half Moon is very different from Bright Moon: Where Half Moon is brightly polished stone, Bright Moon is more wood and plaster, more haphazard. Yet Adora loves Bright Moon more. “Welcome to Bright Moon, princess,” she says, and can’t stop herself from grinning. It’s almost a homecoming. She can’t wait to see Bow and Glimmer again.

(They’ve been writing, but as Adora has learned from writing her mothers, writing does nothing but stave off the longing a little longer).

“Are we almost at the castle?”

“Yes,” responds Adora. She glances upward. The moon is full above them and the stars are hard to make out because of the clouds. “It’s a bit late,” she says, wincing. “Sorry.”

Both of them know that they took a little longer than usual swimming today, and that’s why they’re off schedule. Neither of them voice this aloud. Instead, Catra says, “Don’t apologize. You made the journey very comfortable for me, and I’m grateful.” Her words are laden with an unspoken meaning that Adora immediately understands. “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she adds, “but I am _so_ grateful to be off this horse. My thighs,” she moans.

“Sore?” Adora can imagine: they’ve been riding for three days straight, which Catra is unused to.

“I’m going to be bow legged forever.”

Adora laughs. “No one will notice under your dress.”

“You’re supposed to tell me I won’t!” 

“I can’t promise anything,” says Adora faux-gravely.

“ _Adora_!”

“Fine, fine, you’ll be fine.”

Catra snorts. “Because that was so reassuring, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” says Adora, and then, “we’re here.”

The massive castle gates stand before them. Bright Moon castle is just like its city in the sense that it’s detailed, but unlike its city, the castle is more polished, pale, rounded. Adora heard once it was made of limestone. The moat is full of water lilies and has a miniature stream and waterfall that Glimmer showed her once. They function as part of the gardens. This is certain about Bright Moon: it is a _wealthy_ kingdom. It rivals the port kingdom of Half Moon, which is incredibly rich.

“Wow,” says Catra in a small voice. 

Adora smiles to herself. She then jumps off Swift Wind and approaches the guards. “I’m here with Princess Catra of Half Moon,” she announces, and motions to Catra. The guards’ eyes widen, slightly, and then they bow to her. Adora glances back at Catra, on horseback, still a little messy from the three days’ journey, and gives her a respectful nod. Bowing doesn’t feel right, considering they’ve spent all this time traveling together. Catra looks shocked, then a little pleased.

“You may enter,” they say, lowering the drawbridge and raising the gate. 

Adora leads Catra into Bright Moon. A guard goes before them to announce their arrival. As they wait awkwardly in the courtyard for the royal family to receive them, Catra hisses, “I look like garbage.”

Adora looks at her. “I think you look good?” she offers, because Catra _does._ She looks less polished and more like the Catra Adora knows — knew. The Catra that used to sneak out of lessons and wasn’t afraid of a little dirt. She pauses, and looks again. With new eyes, she sees what Glimmer will see: two weary, dirty travelers, and flushes. Catra’s hair is falling out of her updo; her dress is muddy. Adora is equally grimy, and Swift Wind isn’t anywhere as white as he should be.

Before Catra can respond, their horses are led away by some servants, and the main doors burst open. The first figure Adora makes out is Glimmer running towards her, and then she sees the rest of the family, Micah and Angella, strolling behind their daughter. Glimmer, practically bouncing, bows very quickly to Catra, who curtsies in response, and wraps Adora in a huge hug.

It shocks Adora — she lets out a little _oof_ as the smaller princess barrels into her, but then she relaxes and puts her arms around Glimmer and laughs, too, clear and bright and happy. “I _missed_ you!” shouts Glimmer into Adora’s ear, and Adora, though hyperaware of Catra brooding beside her, feels some of her exhaustion lessen.

Adora untangles herself and bows awkwardly, the way one might do if they’d just been hugged by a princess but known they needed to bow anyways. “I missed you, too,” she says, and then turns her gaze towards Catra, smiling a soft smile at her. “And now you can meet _my_ princess. This is Princess Catra.”

Catra, who had been glowering, preens at that. “Yes,” says Glimmer, recovering quickly. “Nice to meet you, Princess Catra.”

“The pleasure is mine,” says Catra, though she doesn’t look pleased so much as uncomfortable. Adora frowns. Something is wrong, but she can’t place what. As they’re ushered into the dining hall and Catra exchanges pleasantries with the rest of the family, that feeling nags her, but she can’t seem to figure out what it could be.

She leaves to eat with the lesser lords and low knights; Bow greets her as enthusiastically and Catra shoots her _I want to leave_ death glares throughout the whole dinner. It feels a little as if two worlds have collided. She tells Bow this and he laughs at her, asks how her journey was, whether she wants any mead.

She does, and it was good, she assures him, and they launch into conversation. 

Adora has missed Bright Moon.

She tears into her bread and meat happily as he recounts the past couple of months since she’s been gone. “It’s been strangely quiet,” he tells her. “Not much to do. Ever since Bright Moon neutralized the Horde — sorry, King Hordak — he’s been dining here more and more frequently, and we don’t really have much patrolling to do.”

_King Hordak._ Adora rubs her back, a habit now, and scowls. “I can’t believe they won’t tell us how.”

“Even Glimmer doesn’t know,” says Bow, and shrugs. 

“Glimmer’s not one for strategy, though.”

He sighs, nods, and then forces a smile onto his face, knocking at Adora’s shoulder with his fist gently, enough to make her sway but not enough to make her bruise. “But I want to hear how everyone is! How Half Moon is! How Catra—” here he digs his elbow into her side, an eyebrow raised suggestively “—is! How Mara and Razz are!”

Adora smiles, too, and splays out her hand to tick off fingers. “Half Moon is _hot,_ it’s miserable; Mara and Razz write that they’re well, and that they miss me; and Catra is…” she stops. “Catra is Catra.” 

“You haven’t been able to see your moms?”

Adora shakes her head.

“What’s wrong with Catra?” his voice has become quiet, eyebrows furrowed. 

“I came back and she was just...off. We haven’t gotten along until this journey, but it’s still not the same,” Adora sighs and takes another swig of mead. “I feel like I must have done something wrong during patrolling, but I don’t know what. And she looks so unhappy all the time, Bow! I mean, something’s wrong, but I don’t know what and she won’t tell me.”

He opens his mouth, and before he can comfort her, the door swings open.

The hall falls silent and waits for the message. A trumpet sounds. And then: “King Hordak!” announces the guard. Adora blinks. _King…?_

And yet, there he is, marching in. She eyes him and notices a scraggly grey beard and beady eyes. His hair looks greasy. All the knights at the table tense. No matter how often Hordak must come, no one seems to be used to it. Adora sneaks a look at Catra, who is rising to meet him, suddenly bashful and shy. “He _is_ kind of handsome,” she’s telling Glimmer as they walk up to him. Glimmer looks incredibly annoyed by this.

Adora’s blood boils.

“Princess Glimmer,” says Hordak dismissively. Glimmer narrows her eyes at him. “And my dearest fiancé, Princess Catra.”

“Hello, darling,” says Catra, and presses a kiss to his cheek.

“Oh,” says Bow faintly beside her.

Adora can’t bring herself to say anything at all.

They’re to be married in exactly a fortnight. “I didn’t know, Adora, I swear,” Glimmer says when she tells her, and all Adora thinks about is how Catra won’t look her in the eye. “But I think you can go riding, if you want to escape the castle for a few days, since Catra’s relieving you of your service. They’ll want to make you a lord the evening before the wedding, though.”

Adora paces her room. “How could she have done this?”

Bow sits on her bed and sighs. “Maybe she didn’t have a choice.”

“She _kissed_ his cheek, Bow!” (Adora thinks, _she nearly kissed me_ ). “This must have been how Bright Moon—” she stops and considers whether or not, now, this actually counts as Bright Moon’s doing “— Half Moon? I don’t know — neutralized the Hor—King Hordak.” She paces. She patrolled Bright Moon’s border for _three years_ only for the girl she lo— the girl she l— for _Catra_ to marry the man responsible for this. “Can we even trust him?”

“No,” says Glimmer immediately. “I already warned her against it.”

“Let me guess,” says Adora morosely, “she didn’t want to hear it.”

Glimmer nods. Bow looks at them, and frowns. “She doesn’t love him, Adora, please. She tensed the same way the rest of us did when his name was called. Think about this logically, alright?” He pushes himself off the bed and pulls Adora into a long, warm hug. “She cares for you, Adora, I promise. There must be a reason for this.”

“I don’t care!” shouts Adora, breaking away from the hug. “Look what she’s doing!” She rubs her back a little more furiously. 

Glimmer and Bow exchange looks. They sigh. “I’ll keep pressing her,” offers Glimmer. “I don’t think she’s being fair to you at all.”

Bow’s expression becomes displeased. “She’s doing something, Glimmer. Don’t put her in danger.”

“Marrying Hordak puts her in danger!” snaps Glimmer. “His soldiers tried to kill our patrollers so many times—”

They both lapse into sudden silence, and look towards Adora, who is now on the bed, head in her hands. She’s fighting back tears. “I think,” says Adora quietly, “I should try and sleep.” She thinks about the way Catra looked at her just moments before the announcement, and something inside her burns with longing.

“I’m sorry, Adora,” says Bow, coming to hug her.

“Me too,” agrees Glimmer, and drapes herself over the two of them.

Despite herself, Adora smiles, grateful for her friends and to be in Bright Moon again.

She sets off the next day with Bow and Glimmer’s help, and rides Swift Wind through the shortcuts she couldn’t take Catra, at a pace she couldn’t take Catra, and goes home. It still takes a full day to reach the village, with fewer breaks when she should have taken more, but Swift Wind is content once she leaves him in the field to graze, so she knows she hasn’t overexerted him.

She knocks on the old cottage’s door, just shy of the village and in a more woodsy part of the landscape. The crickets chirp loudly and lightning bugs move throughout the air. “Mara,” she calls. “Razz!” The door remains heavy and ancient, but the lantern above her is lit: they’re home, but distracted.

Then the door creaks open, and there is the familiar wrinkled face of her Razz, and behind her, Adora’s Mara, and just as their faces break out into happy grins, Adora’s own mood lightens considerably. “I missed you,” she whispers, muffled by their embrace around her, right there in the doorway. 

“What are you doing here?” says Mara, voice thick with her accent, and Razz swats her playfully.

“She’ll tell us in her own time,” says Razz, looking quizzically at Adora, like she’s guessed the reason Adora’s standing there.

Adora forces a smile and looks around for something else to say, to mention. “Is the roof still leaking?”

“I patched it up with some boards. It should keep for another winter.”

Mara is looking determinedly at her, like she doesn’t want Adora to ask the question she knows that’s coming. There’s a pause as Adora decided whether or not to actually voice it, and then, unable to help herself, Adora’s mouth thins into an unimpressed line, and asks, “And after that?”

“You need to stop worrying about us, dearie,” says Razz in lieu of an answers.

Adora sighs and scrubs her face with her hands. “Can I sleep here tonight?” she finally says, voice quiet, and the mood changes — they both laugh in response, and take her to her old room, which is not sparse, but instead cluttered with old trinkets and books. She breathes in the familiar sight, and though her room is cast in shadow, the memory of it helps her see what she knows is there: an old doll, her bed, dozens of wood carvings that she used to make and send to her mothers.

They watch her like she’s delicate, and Adora’s heart lurches in her chest, seeing this familiar sight so well preserved, and thinks about how she will finally be able to give her mothers the Grayskull Chateau. And then she sits on her childhood bed, filled by a heavy longing and sorrow and begins to weep. 

They hold her until she falls asleep.

For once, Adora doesn’t rise at dawn. Instead, she wakes with the sun high in the sky, bright and cheerful, with birdsong in full swing. Her mothers don’t ask her why she cried the night before, but instead serve her breakfast, and Adora offers them some of the food she nicked from the kitchens before she left Bright Moon. “I have good news,” she says eventually, sitting at their table and listening to the birds.

They nod at her, curious but not pressing. Mara comes behind her to hold her for a moment, and Adora — for once — doesn’t scold her, citing her age as far past being held by her mother. “I’ll be a lord in less than two weeks’ time,” she says, and beams at them. 

“Wow,” says Razz quietly. “Time flies, dearie.”

It’s true: Adora can remember leaving this place, determined to change their poverty and disgusted by their hungry letters when a famine set it. Grayskull means _safety,_ for Adora and for her mothers. She’ll miss this cottage, of course, but not the way Razz risks being called a witch for practicing medicine, or the way Mara travels too far to train the local lord’s sons in fencing and archery.

“But…?” says Mara into her hair.

“Catra is getting married,” Adora confesses, and swallows a lump forming in her throat. “To King Hordak.”

They sit in stunned silence for a moment, and then Razz peers at her knowingly. “Sometimes, dearie, to be a princess is not to marry those who you love, but instead to marry those who will keep you safe. Hordak has been threatening the local kingdoms for years.” She grabs some mint hanging from the roof, and begins to chop it to throw into a bubbling cup.

Mint tea. Adora hasn’t had that in so long. She sighs. “Not Half Moon, though,” she points out stubbornly.

“Hm,” says Mara into her hair. “Half Moon is bordered by Bright Moon and King Hordak. If Hordak succeeded in defeating Bright Moon—” 

“—Which he wouldn’t.”

“Perhaps. If he did, though, Half Moon would be threatened. And if he gave up on conquering Bright Moon first, he would turn his gaze to Half Moon.”

Adora frowns. She hadn’t considered that. “That doesn’t explain why she was so — so _difficult_ when I came back from my time at Bright Moon.”

Mara and Razz exchange looks, and then smile softly. Mara places a kiss on Adora’s head, then floats towards the mint tea to ladle some out for Adora. “We don’t know,” she says, softly, “why Catra was being difficult, but can you imagine, Adora, knowing you were to marry this horrible king, and not being able to tell your closest friend?”

“We weren’t close,” says Adora, then pauses and considers who else Catra _is_ close with, and comes up with no names at all. “Oh,” she mumbles awkwardly. “Maybe we were.”

“And she had to share you with Glimmer and Bow,” says Mara.

“And now—” Razz snaps her fingers “—you have disappeared right before her wedding.”

Adora places her forehead onto the table. “Oh,” she says again.

They don’t press the issue any longer. Instead, they assign tasks for her: chopping wood for cooking, helping butcher some meat and hanging it up for drying, tying bundle of herbs together for Razz, and all the while they catch up, and Adora’s ache lessens a little as they do so, until she can’t quite remember why she was so hurt in the first place.

Homecoming has a way of healing you, she realizes, even as she begins to understand that she must return to Bright Moon.

She cries when she leaves anyway. 

She returns to Bright Moon quietly, moving quickly to the stables and spending a good amount of time there taking care of Swift Wind. She brushes his hair out, and tends to his hooves to make sure his horseshoes are fine. Mara and Razz gave her a couple apples; she fishes one out and feeds it to him.

It’s peaceful, really, in the dark, to watch Swift Wind eat his apple and to coo to him softly, while the other horses neigh and huff gently in the background. Adora smiles and lays her head against his side, pulling her arms around him. His neck moves for a fraction of a second, and then he stills, allowing her to hug him.

“Where _were_ you!” comes a voice, and Adora and Swift Wind startle. Adora snaps into place, good posture and all, a respectable distance from Swift Wind. Catra appears from the shadows. She looks different from the way she was on their journey: hair done in a net, in a blood red gown with a square neckline, intricately embroidered with gold.

“Catr—princess!” manages Adora.

Catra just narrows her eyes. “You left me,” she says.

“I went to see my mothers,” responds Adora. “Surely that isn’t a crime.”

“A few days before my wedding?” 

“We still have a week!”

Catra huffs and begins to pace. Her slippers peek out from her dress — also red, also intricately embroidered. Adora’s still in her breeches and a loose white shirt, since she’d been riding. She tucks a stray hair behind her ear self-conciously, and sighs. “I haven’t relieved you of your duty,” says Catra after a moment.

Adora opens her mouth to point out that the moment Catra became engaged, Adora was technically relieved of her duty, but then closes it again. “I apologize, M’Lady.”

A thick silence settles between them. “You’re angry with me,” says Catra. “Well. I am angry with you.” With a flick of her dress, she marches towards the exit of the stable. “Not that I actually care about you, anyway,” she adds, for good measure, and Adora feels her stomach sink.

“You’re being so self-absorbed,” snaps Adora, unable to help herself.

“Right,” says Catra, and stalks off.

Somehow, that just makes Adora feel worse.

Adora spends the next few days in a trance. Bow and Glimmer take her around Bright Moon, and while she enjoys it, the lingering — looming, even — knowledge that Catra is getting _married_ to King Hordak, of all people, sticks with her, inescapably heavy like the heat just a few days earlier. 

(She _is_ grateful that Bright Moon is cooler than Half Moon, and that the sky clouds over for a few days. Once, Angella remarks that she hopes the sky clears up for the wedding, which just sours Adora’s mood and makes her wish for more cloudy days out of spite. After all, she does prefer cooler weather).

Eventually — after Adora has answered half of her questions with an absentminded “mhm” or “what?” — Glimmer suggests they spar. She takes Adora to the courtyard where the other knights and guards train and makes a motion at all the weapons lined up in the armoury, neatly ordered by category and size.

Adora doesn’t even have to think — she pulls out her own sword immediately and brandishes it with a lopsided grin at Glimmer. She’s quicker to pull on her armor, used to its heaviness, and something in her settles into a strange calm. _This_ is familiar — Adora with this weight on her shoulders and feet, sword drawn, helmet’s plume dancing above her head, heat sticky but unnoticeable in the rush of excitement.

Above her, she catches a glimpse of a figure in a crimson dress walking through a balcony pause and watch for a moment, suddenly interested.

Adora shrugs and looks towards Glimmer, who’s also in her armor, and then they meet head-on.

(Above her, Catra can tell it’s Adora by the crest on her armor, by the color of her plume, and watches intently, suddenly warm and flushed, as Adora disarms Glimmer, again and again and again).

Her muscles ache. This is all Adora can think, underclothes plastered to her body with sweat, hair limp and tousled by her helmet. She’s happy, though, can’t stop grinning. As she peels her armor from her body and hangs it up, enjoying the twinge in her joints as she does so, the castle’s cool air rushes against her. 

Something snaps behind her. Adora spins, still in sparring mode, grabbing her sword and pointing it at the person just beyond her shoulder, a single fluid motion. The blade settles at the chest of the princess, who holds her hands up and smirks. “I’ve never seen you fight before,” says Catra, moving Adora’s sword with her pointer finger finger and leaning against the armory wall, nonchalant. She looks surprisingly flushed, though — a look Adora hasn’t ever seen on Catra. Her gaze keeps drifting towards near Adora’s chin, maybe her mouth.

Adora scrubs at the spot. She probably has dirt there.

“Catra,” she says, and then realizes what she’s said and cringes. “I mean. Princess.”

“Not the first time you’ve called me Catra,” says the princess faintly.

“I apologize,” says Adora, and bows low to make up for it. And then, because she can’t help herself, “I thought you didn’t care about me.”

Catra stiffens awkwardly. “Marriage makes you nostalgic, I suppose,” she says, though she seems uncomfortable, somehow, when she says the word _marriage._ Adora herself feels her mood drop when she hears it. She swallows, fiddling with the red and brown wristbands she’s wearing; she doesn’t want to think about Catra in a white dress, pledging herself to Hordak.

She lifts her sweaty tunic and places it on the ground with the rest of her armor. Catra tracks the movement with her eyes, lingering a moment to study the muscles on Adora’s stomach. Adora swallows, self-conscious (Catra hasn’t seen her without a shirt) but heart pounding, too. “You don’t have to do this,” whispers Adora. “You can still back out.”

“I can’t,” responds Catra, and her voice is low, melancholic, defeated. She’s looking at an x-shaped scar on Adora’s abdomen. Adora scratches it somewhat uncomfortably. “I think you know that I can’t.”

Adora sighs and reaches over to slip off her left boot. “He might — Catra, he’s a murderer, he might—”

“I know what he might do,” says Catra. All of a sudden, Adora sees the bags under her eyes, the way her eyes are wide and follow every movement with desperation. She’s _scared._ Adora has never seen Catra scared before. She burns to hold the princess close, to whisper that she’ll protect her, but Adora knows that’s a lie. She pulls off her right boot instead.

In less than a week’s time, Adora will be a lord and not Catra’s personal guard. (In a week’s time, Adora is free to go wherever she pleases, and yet, she just wants to stay here). “I don’t know if I can watch,” she admits, finally, voice quiet and sad. She tugs at her swordbelt, letting it fall to the floor with a soft _clank._

Catra knows she means the wedding. “I’m sorry,” she says miserably, and takes a step forward, but Adora takes a step back. She’s watching Adora’s hips, but slowly she rakes her gaze upwards, and Adora, though she is undressing herself, feels as if Catra was the one peeling off her layers. When Catra speaks again, she’s whispering. “Please come.”

The _I need you_ is unspoken, but Adora hears it louder than anything else.

She becomes a lord in a similar way to being knighted: the throne room, down on one knee, the sunset’s golden lighting flickering in through the high-vaulted windows. Adora keeps her head low and focuses on Catra’s slippers poking out from behind her dress. Last time — when she was knighted — it was Catra’s father who did it.

Now, Catra has a shiny silver blade and a crooked smile, and Adora aches.

She keeps her arm rested on her knee, even though the lunge is starting to make her already sore joints uncomfortable. “Look up,” says Catra, softly. 

Adora looks up. Catra has little curls haloing her face, intentional this time. Her cheeks are dark, eyes lidded but still tracking the motion in Adora’s own expression. Adora knows her eyes must be wide, cheeks flushed, mouth parted just slightly, and though there is a whole crowd that has gathered to watch, all she sees is Catra.

Catra brings the sword gently against one shoulder. She’s saying something, but all Adora can focus on is the sword’s weight against her armor, and thinking about their skin touching though the connection of metal — Catra’s hand wrapped around the shaft of the blade. The blade which touches Adora’s shoulder pad. The shoulder pad which touches her shoulder.

Her whole body hums with the thought. She leans a fraction of an inch closer, into Catra’s orbit.

Catra moves the sword to Adora’s other shoulder, and Adora shivers. The window behind Catra makes her edges glow, red dress bleeding into the light around her. Adora’s vision is hazy; the moment is so still that she can’t breathe, lest she ruin it. The way Catra is looking at her: guarded, since Hordak is right there, but tenderly, too —

It makes Adora’s heart burst.

The sword moves to her head. Only one piece of metal, now, between them. Adora’s gaze is forced downward, back towards Catra’s hem and shoes.

“Rise,” says Catra, after what feels like a lifetime of waiting, “Lord Adora of Grayskull.”

And all Adora wants to do with her new title is court a princess about to be married to someone else. She stands, and Catra sheathes her sword, and asks if she swears fealty to Half Moon, and Adora says yes, and then thanks her softly, so no one else can hear her. Catra looks surprised by this, but says nothing — just smiles a sad smile at her, like she’s wishing Adora could court her as well.

Adora watches the wedding in quiet discontent. She sits next to Bow, who holds her hand the entire time, and thinks about crying.

Images, later, will be all she remembers about it: Catra, dressed in white and smiling softly at the priest across from her. Her hair is tied into a braid around her head, and her veil dances over her face, but Adora knows the expression instantly. Her eyes are achingly sad, she knows, and her bottom lip is trembling, but so long as the ends are lifted upward and her eyebrows remain unfurrowed, no one will see it.

It makes the wedding that much harder to sit through. No one else sees Catra’s distress.

There’s Hordak, too, with red jewels set into his crown like drops of blood. He looks at Catra hungrily, like he can’t wait to carve her up, and though Adora knows she can hold her own, she looks so much smaller in his embrace that she feels the urge to stand up and object anyway.

But she can’t. She _can’t._

Bow squeezes her hand tighter. She squeezes back.

Though it’s torture, she can’t tear her eyes away from it: the thought of being unable to see Catra, even for a moment, frightens her. She is jumpy when he leans in to kiss her, even though Catra looks disgusted for half a second, almost unnoticeably to everyone else, and Adora tracks his every movement for a blade.

Her scars ache.

Bow squeezes her hand.

The wedding doesn’t stop, and no one dies.

(And still, Adora feels something wither inside of her).

The feast afterward is rowdy. There’s no other way to describe it. Though it’s loud, merry, full of music, Adora can’t actually make out any sounds. She eats mechanically, nods at the right part of the conversation, plasters a pleasant smile on her face. Neither Bow nor Glimmer pushes her; they worry, but let her remain silent and thoughtless. She doesn’t even taste what she’s fed.

She retires to bed early, but can’t sleep. Instead, she paces in her room, watching the moon from the thin slit of a window, doing push-ups to keep her mind from wandering. The sky is clear and the stars are bright, things that perhaps in another night would make her still and watch.

Adora can’t focus.

She goes through a work out monotonously until she’s sweating. She reads something and gives up through the first page; she tries writing, and can’t get past a single sentence. She even considers waking Glimmer or Bow, but knows that they would just be disgruntled and far too understanding.

She wants to go riding, but it’s too dark: the moon has already set, anyway, and so it’s impossible to see anything without a torch. She heaves a sigh and throws herself against her bed, writhing against her blankets and then forcing herself to still in hopes that sleep will take her. 

It doesn’t, of course.

All lying still does is make the thought that’s been echoing in her head a little louder, like a war drum: maybe she should check up on Catra.

Already now the thought seems less ridiculous, having been alone for too long and letting the anxiety build up. Adora wishes, suddenly, passionately, that she had let them get lost in the woods: then they would have swam in streams and journeyed for the rest of the summer, and Catra would never have married.

She wonders if her mothers would have liked to meet Catra, and then she wonders if Adora would have survived the onslaught of embarrassing stories. She heaves a sigh and gets off of her bed, beginning to pace again. She _really_ should be checking on Catra; after all, she has gone to bed with — with _Hordak._

Before she can suppress the thought, she’s grabbing her sword. The thing is heavy in her hand, familiar, comfortable, and its presence only encourages her. She pads towards the door and opens it, looking both left and right before she slinks into the doorway, sword held high.

Catra and Hordak’s bedchambers aren’t very far. While the torches lining the wall make her shadow dance around her, and the entire castle is quiet at night, the proximity of Catra urges her forward despite the eeriness. She can only hear herself breathing, and the faint crackle of wood as the torches continue to burn.

She reaches the room in a couple of minutes, surprised and alarmed to see that there aren’t any guards posted at their door.

Adora curses Bright Moon’s king and queen, but quietly. She lingers at the door for a moment, unsure of whether to knock: it’s an old oak thing, with beautifully wrought iron across it. The moment lengthens as Adora hovers, unsure of what to do and uncomfortable in the creepy darkness.

And then she hears it: a soft sob, which sounds suspiciously like Catra, heaving and desperate and aching, and Adora doesn’t think, then, just rams open the door.

The scene she finds makes her gasp. She takes it in pieces: Catra, with her wide eyes and bloodstained hands and smear against the bodice of her pale nightgown, tears tracking against her cheeks; then the body beside her. “Adora..?” she says, quiet, and then, “Close the door,” more panicked, and Adora complies.

Hordak is lying face down on a blade, his blood seeping through the bedsheets. Catra is still sitting beside him, half underneath him. “What happened?” whispers Adora.

“Help me up,” says Catra, panicked expression disappearing off her face and being replaced with an authoritative tone. Adora rushes to her side and lifts up the body of the king so that Catra can slither out, equally careful to grab the part of his robes that aren’t bloodied as well as not to touch his skin.

Once Catra’s jumped off the bed, she rams into Adora: still bloody, but warm, and Adora freezes for a moment. Catra’s clinging to her _._ They’re touching through thin cloth: Catra’s hands on her lower back, against her waist, cheek against her shoulder, Adora can feel Catra’s heavy breathing against her.

She carefully lifts her own arms and holds the other girl. Her whole body sings with the contact. Adora has been longing to hold her for so long, and here she is, doing just that. Before she can help herself, she places a soft kiss to the crown of Catra’s head, and her wild brown hair gets in her nose and mouth, and, as if by response, Catra begins to cry.

Her undertunic is soaked within seconds. Adora begins to hush her, to sway with her. “He tried to kill me,” Catra whispers into her chest. “I thought — I thought I would have time for the poison to run its course, but I had to—” She cuts off, voice trailing into the air. Adora looks at Hordak prostrate on the bed. 

“We need to run,” says Adora, softly.

“No,” says Catra. “No. I have a plan, can we just — can we stay here for a moment longer?”

Adora doesn’t respond to that, just holds her tighter and ignores the dead body in the room. They rest for a moment like that, with Adora matching her breathing to Catra’s and trying not to think too hard about the situation. “That was the worst wedding I’ve ever been to,” she says into Catra’s hair, and Catra below her snorts.

“Imagine being the bride,” she says.

“I’m still angry with you,” Adora mutters grumpily.

Catra laughs a little harder. “Hard to believe when you’re holding me, Adora.”

Frustration flashes through her. _She’s not taking this seriously._ “Just because I lo— because you _matter_ to me, Catra, doesn’t mean you don’t have the potential to hurt me!” Adora untangles herself from the embrace and takes a step back. “I don’t see why you don’t understand that. I mean, you couldn’t have _told_ me you were getting married to the man—”

  
“The man who sent out a special notice among his soldiers to kill you, specifically, because you were doing such an efficient job of neutralizing the Horde?” Catra glares at her. “And now you’re yelling at me even though I nearly lost my life trying to protect you from him? Really?”

“Protect me?” splutters Adora.

  
“Why do you think _I_ volunteered to marry him?” Catra glares at Adora and then gives up when Adora goes quiet. She stalks towards the body, grabbing at Hordak’s arms and tries to flip him onto his back. He’s too big, though, and she struggles with the task. “Help me, will you?” she grits out as she tries to tug him towards her, but only succeeds in shifting his position awkwardly.

Adora sighs and helps her flip him over, fighting back bile when she accidentally touches his cold skin. Her own skin crawls. She fights to think about anything else, anything but the _corpse_. She moves to the other side of the bed and puts her hands on her hips. “You still — you were so _cruel_ to me when I got back. And then you didn’t tell me—”

“If I told you, you wouldn’t have let me do this! It was the only way to neutralize him!”

“You were going to _poison_ your husband!”

“So I could marry you!” shouts Catra, and Adora’s mouth snaps shut with a soft click.

“What?” She whispers this, suddenly unable to think of anything else to say. Catra, beside her, is quiet too, like she wasn’t intending to say what she just said. _So I could marry you._ The words volley around the room. Catra looks down at the blade poking out of Hordak’s chest and adjusts his hands so that he’s gripping it. 

“So it looks like a suicide,” explains Catra, not mentioning what she said before. “The Bright Moon court will believe us, anyway, since they helped me organize his poisoning.” 

“But you were so — hurtful—” Adora can’t wrap her mind around it.

Catra blinks at her. “And you weren’t? Adora, you didn’t write! When you did — a year in, need I remind you — it was just to say about how much you loved Bright Moon. If you missed me at all, you didn’t mention it. Of course I was hurt,” she snaps. “But I couldn’t even talk to you, because I had this whole thing to organize,” she waves at the body, “and that’s not my point, anyway. My point is that you weren’t even upset you were forced to leave me.”

“Of course I was upset,” says Adora quietly. “But your father—”

“Could have been reading our letters, I know, why would that really matter?”

“Catra, I—”

“And _then_ the only way you would talk to me was if I needled you, and you picked fights at horrible moments, like _now,_ when my husband is _dead_ between us, and we’re rehashing the last couple of years like old lovers!” She huffs in frustration. “Look, here’s my plan. You’re going to return to your room and act normal, which for you is going to be unsettled, but everyone will just assume it’s because of the wedding.”

“I’m that obvious?”

Catra rolls her eyes. “A little bit.”

“Oh.”

“I’m going to go to the library, like I got caught up in reading before bed, because everyone knows this wasn’t a love marriage anyway,” continues Catra, “and I’m going to scream when I realize that my husband has committed suicide.” She looks at her clothes with disgust, and then at Adora’s. “We’re both going to have to change as well, and burn these.”

“This is my nicest undertunic!” argues Adora.

“I’ll buy you a nicer one, darling,” says Catra, and that shuts Adora up.

_Darling._ Her cheeks burn.

“And everything will be okay,” says Catra, finally, a little like she’s trying to convince herself. “Angella and Micah were in on the plot, so they won’t press me. Just keep your mouth closed. Not even a word to Bow or Glimmer!”

Adora pouts for a moment. “Fine,” she says eventually. And then, “I don’t approve of your courting techniques.”

“You mean, marrying a man to save your life and make you a lord so that I _can_ court you?”

“No,” says Adora, “I mean the murdering part.”

Catra, shaken as she is, smiles. “I’m never going to live that down, am I.”

“No.” Adora smiles as well.

They take a moment to gaze at each other, Hordak between them, and to smile softly. It feels like a homecoming, like sharing a secret, like — Adora thinks of a word she’s been trying to repress for so long. It’s a little like falling in love. “I can’t wait to stop wearing dresses,” says Catra. “You can wear dresses for me.” And then, because Adora is still smiling, she adds, “You know, I didn’t miss the way you were willing to run as a fugitive with me.”

“Shut up,” says Adora.

“I don’t think I will,” responds Catra happily. “Now go back to your room. Hide that tunic, and burn it tomorrow.”

Adora crosses the room to hold her for a second longer, to place another kiss onto the crown of her head and accept a kiss to her jawline before she does exactly as she’s told.

The castle, when she wakes up, is abuzz with the news of Hordak’s suicide. Catra bursts into tears whenever anyone mentions it, and they’re convincing enough that if Adora weren’t in on the plot she wouldn’t be able to tell if they’re real or fake. They haven’t been able to speak, but Catra gives her meaningful looks as they cross paths, and that, for now, is enough. “How horrible,” says Bow, “to walk in and find him like that.”

“Yeah,” says Adora, as the scene from last night flashes before her eyes, “Horrible.”

They don’t say anything else about it.

Catra knocks at her room that night, though, when it’s late and everyone else is sound asleep. Adora looks up, surprised to see her leaning against the doorway. “Hey, Adora,” she says, and her voice is husky like before, but gentle, too, and Adora can’t help but blush. She’s in pants today, a more comfortable look on her, whereas Adora’s in just a shift, about to go to bed.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” says Adora.

“I know,” says Catra. “But I couldn’t sleep.”

There’s an unspoken reason behind it, and the castle is cold enough that to hold her wouldn’t be uncomfortable, and _Adora_ couldn’t sleep, either, but still she hesitates. “Your husband just died,” she whispers, unsure of the etiquette of respecting a man’s passing when he, a year or two earlier, called for her own death. 

“Exactly.” Catra’s smirking, but Adora can see the rings under her eyes. Even in distress, Catra refuses to play the part. 

“Is that all you want? Just a warm body to sleep next to?” Adora teases, playfully hurt, and places a hand over her chest as though wounded.

“I could do with a kiss good night as well,” says Catra, smirk widening, and crosses the room to plant herself in front of Adora.

“Is that so,” says Adora, settling her hands on her waist, and grins. She could get used to this: the easiness of holding Catra, nightfall obscuring her features, lips plump and soft and bitten. She remembers all the times she saw a shift plastered to Catra’s waist and decides she prefers the puffy shirt and breeches. She likes that, too, that she gets to decide to prefer, and that Catra’s smiling at her, easy and relaxed, and lets herself lean in for their lips to finally — _finally_ — meet.

She thinks her previously unthinkable word: _love,_ and then says it to herself. “I love her,” a quiet admittance against Catra’s lips, which curve up at the sound of Adora’s voice.

She sleeps better, holding Catra, than she has in a long time.

Five years down the line, when they’ve argued about whether to stay at Half Moon or Grayskull or even Hordak’s dusty old castle, since _technically_ they’re both queens of his expanse of land, and Adora gets regular visits from Bow and Glimmer, and Catra meets her mothers — after everything has smoothed out, Adora realizes she’s stopped aching.

Catra, too, stops feeling so unreachable and more like an extension of herself. Adora’s still terrible at the _big picture_ and _diplomacy_ and _politics,_ but Catra _isn’t,_ and so they find themselves in an easy rhythm. Adora even gets to go hunting with the other lords during the summer, and sometimes she even gets to steal her wife away to swim with her in a nearby stream. 

She rises, of course, at dawn. Next to her, the sunlight is beginning to cast its glow across her sleeping wife, who loves nothing more than to lie in. Grayskull Chateau, where they spend most of their time, is always silent in the early morning, and Adora has a habit of stealing down to the castle kitchens and grabbing fresh bread. She brings it up to her room for her wife, as well, to have some when she rises.

Her scars still ache, of course. Sometimes they both startle when the shadows twist the wrong way, and they both have nightmares. Adora dreams, sometimes, of near-deaths against the Horde; Catra is plagued by a murder she committed in self defense. Nothing is easy, exactly, when it comes to healing, but they heal together, and eventually daily life becomes easier with the help of each other, and the help of Mara and Razz, who are a regular fixture of the Chateau.

Glimmer comments, once, on how codependent they are.

Adora cites the years she spent plastered to Catra’s side and shrugs.

Catra, across the room, hears and locks gazes with Adora. For a moment, they have a silent conversation to judge whether or not this is actually true, and come up with no real answer. Instead, Catra breaks into laughter, rolls her eyes, and turns back to her conversation with another lord. Adora thinks, very easily, that despite all its problems, there is nothing in the world she would have traded for a different fate.

_Content,_ she realizes later, is the word to describe this, watching Catra ready herself for bed and asking her to be helped out of her blue dress. As Catra’s nimble fingers untie the back, she makes a joke about a conversation from so long ago — “aren’t you glad we _didn’t_ become fugitives and went with my plan?” — and Adora tells her amiably to shut up.

“Make me,” says Catra, and Adora twists in her hands to kiss her, easy as if it were second nature.

By now, it is.

**Author's Note:**

> thank u SO MUCH to ana & lo for helping me w this fic, & a huuuge shout out to morgan who sat thru all the rough outlines & drew some beautiful pieces for this au [here](https://seasinkarnadine.tumblr.com/post/186042780489/bad-news-no-stream-this-week-because-ill-be-out) and [here](https://seasinkarnadine.tumblr.com/post/185618493699/figbian-and-i-have-been-discussing-a-medieval-au)! the title is a translation of the latin, which is a vergil quote!!
> 
> this is basically a roadtrip au except medieval lmao but if u enjoyed, please comment or yell at me @figbian on tumblr!
> 
> update! someone else drew some gorgeous art, which i really recommend checking out here!


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